As Black Line London’s only current Hawaii resident Laura Trimble provides the lowdown on everything she thinks is fantastic about the Big Island.

Rest assured that while the training is awesome I’m not going to bore you all with that here when there is a whole host of other things to experience! So these are my “Best” things so far…

1) Best for… Coffee. And ice cream!

With coffee and macadamia nuts produced en masse on the island they are everywhere. From ice cream to the latest fish catch, don’t be surprised to see a coffee flavoured macadamia nut crust. As an infrequent coffee drinker I feel a little unqualified to comment on where the best coffee is to be found but it’s hard to look beyond Kope Lani’s iced coffee.

Honourable mention to Lava Java for their Lava Java Shake. But the real reason to choose Kope Lani is that the ice cream is to die for: Caramel Mac Nut, Kope Lani Sundae, Mud Pie, KK Krunch (despite our best efforts we can’t pronounce the Hawaiian), Kona Joy are all winners. Allegedly.

2) Best for… Smoothies

For convenience, good service and (admittedly pretty dodgy) free wifi, the best place we’ve found is Menehune’s just off the pier. Try the Shaka or the Green Honu, they’ll happily add protein to it for you. Tastes best post run while cooling off in the ocean. Alternatively if you make it to Hawi then Kohala Coffee Mill at the top does great smoothies and even better ginger oatcakes.

3) Best for… A chilled out lunch

Almost certainly my favourite place on the island… Basik Acai. Serves bowls with an Acai base topped up with various combinations of fruit, berries, nuts, granola etc etc. I have no idea how I didn’t find this place in 2010. Delicious, tasty, healthy food (even if Scott thinks he is allergic to the granola), great atmosphere, chilled out music, sea breeze, cool seats overlooking a fantastic view of the ocean. I could sit there for hours.

4) Best for… Dinner

I’m reluctant to talk about hidden gems but it’s not often you come across a Japanese lady serving food from what is essentially her kitchen. We stumbled across Kimagure when planning to eat somewhere else and as wellas being the cheapest meal I’ve seen in Kona it is just fabulous. Full of locals and tucked away out of sight in the Kona marketplace mall. Dumpling soup, gyoza and yakiudon are all great. As is everything else as far as I can see. Honourable mention to Rapanui’s which is a bit more pricey but also delicious and based on the wine selection seemingly run by New Zealanders. Last honourable mention to Kona Brewery where you might struggle to get a table but the pizza is fantastic. And to Lava Java for the fish tacos. Let’s face it… despite the impressive array of fast food outlets here if you dig a little deeper you can eat very well.

5) Best for… Happy Hour!

Coming straight from Vegas it didn’t take the boys long to figure this one out. With $4 a cocktail from 3-6pm and a fantastic view of the sunset Huggo’s cannot be beaten. Top marks to the Mai Tai’s and the Rainbow cocktails. And the hula ladies.

So 10 days into my trip and aside from a large amount of training that’s where I’ve been spending my time. I’ve also learned I can live off bagels, humous, no-fat yogurt, granola, almond butter and fresh fruit quite happily for weeks. And that at the farmers market you can buy 3 papayas for $1.

And finally on the training front a few useful tips…

Ad hoc water stations: there is a drinking fountain 2 miles down Ali’i Drive on the left; a shower at the farthest point of the energy lab; and a petrol station on the Queen K halfway (3 miles) from the energy lab back to town. All very welcome and much used.

The old airport is awesome for running reps. Dead straight runway almost exactly 1km long. About 1.5 miles out of town. Does slope up a bit going north. Next to a nice looking and popular beach which I am yet to fully appreciate.

The pool is free, runs masters 3x weekly and has a great vibe. Mostly locals swimming but all friendly and welcoming to visitors. Natascha Badmann has done every session I’ve been to. Steve is the head coach there. He gave me an avocado after my first session.

There are 36 lampposts on Mark and Dave hill, 37 if you include the one on the corner of Palani Road. It’s around a mile and quite steep so if you can hit one every 12 seconds you’re doing pretty well

And I stole this from Macca but apparently it takes 42 seconds to sprint from the Banyan Tree to the finish. Hoping I won’t need to use that one!

BLL are lucky to have some great facilities on our doorstep in SW London. Hampton out door pool is one of them, and a few of the guys recently hooked up for a swim with brilliant local photographer and world class paddler Ben Brown

Tyler Hamilton the Tour de France with a broken collar bone and in what sounds like such mind-bending pain that he ground down 11 of his teeth down to the nerve. EPO or no EPO, that makes him a total bad ass. And if a bad ass writes a book, it’s probably worth reading.

That he’s come clean about his drug use through his cycling career and written about it (with co-writer Daniel Coyle) in such an eloquent and non-sensationalist way pretty much backs up his bad ass credentials.

His book‘The Secret Race’ gives us all an idea of what we might have found out had Lance Armstrong chosen to challenge USADA’s ruling. And it’s pretty mind blowing.

Everyone has an opinion, and I have mine, but you don’t want to hear that. What you might want to hear is that this is the sort of book that anyone with an interest in sports could and should read. The Hamilton story covers an incredible time in bike racing (by any definition of ‘incredible’) and really paints a picture of a man who, after years of lying, wants to decompress by telling the truth, holding nothing back and laying it all out there.

He’s a doper, yes, but like in David Millar’s equally excellent biography ‘Racing Through The Dark’, Hamilton makes it understood that it’s not quite black and white. His delivery is great – facts, events and little conjecture delivered in a personable way.

Doping is complicated – legally, scientifically (and yes, even morally) – but the book finds a great balance of navigating these issues. The attention to detail is amazing and there are excellent footnotes at the end of each chapter that give additional background, sources and context. You also get a sense of how his private life was affected and of not just his real character but that of Armstrong, ASADA pitbull Jeff Novitzky (who seems like a decent lad, to be fair) and many of the other insalubrious players in the drama.

At the end of the book, I didn’t feel sympathy for Hamilton or want to excuse his actions (the period between getting busted and admitting his doping is particularly hard to reconcile) but I did like him. He seemed honest and transparent in his telling of his story as well as contrite and he’s certainly taken it on the chin.

Lance Armstrong attacked Hamilton’s credibility, as he has with anyone of the growing number of voices who speak about his complicity in a decade of doping. But ultimately I think Hamilton emerges from writing this book with great credibility – not for what he did then but for what he’s done now.

But I feel most sorry for Tugboat. The poor fucker didn’t ask for any of this……

Underpinning Black Lone London’s birth is the desire to have devastatingly cool kit, and the new BLL hoodie doesn’t disappoint. With the onset of autumn, this item is stylish and functional. And at only £22, it’s also a bargain.

It’s hard to know where to begin. And it’s hard to believe that it was a whole year ago that I filled in my details on the Challenge Roth website and entered my first full distance event. But fuck me, it came around quick.

The weeks immediately running up to the race had been a bit disrupted by a busy spell at work, some illness in the house and some other life stuff such as going to see The Stone Roses in Manchester the weekend before (amazing!) that takes priority – usual rules for age groupers – so of course my mind going into the trip was filled with thoughts of the sessions I had missed rather then the hours I had done in that time.

This was always going to be an epic trip. Not only is Roth a legendary event, but the road trip itself with @JamieWardell and @TroyMaloy, driving all 800 odd KM’s to Nuremberg meant epicness guaranteed.

12 hours in the car passed with loads of great banter, top tunes and surprisingly quickly but don’t believe them when they say the Autobahns are the best roads in the world 🙁

Our first sight of the course came the next day, Friday, when we headed to the swim start. The swim takes place in a busy working canal which is closed to all traffic for practice and the event so there was a fairly small window to get in the water. Although the buoys were not yet laid out, we knew roughly where the turn around points were (or so we thought – more of that later) and let me tell you, when you can see km’s up a long straight canal, it looks a long way. The vibes were really great, and we hung out with fellow London based friends Paul D, Paul B,Laura, Matt (who saved a hunger meltdown by cracking out about 2 kilo’s of @FreespeedLondon raisins), Andrew, Ian and Ash.

From there we hit a local cafe for coffee and breakfast before driving a good section of the bike course. The perception is that it’s flat. It’s not, and it’s more than rolling. We had the bikes in the car so we stopped just before the steepest climb and rode an out and back section for about an hour. Being out an the bikes cranked the excitement up a notch and with some smooth German roads it was clear there would be some very fast sections. From there to registration and a stroll around the Expo where I managed to lose my beloved Oakley sunglasses. Most bleak.

Saturday was about a few last minute tweeks and gathering supplies before trying to rest up as much as possible, getting some carbs in and trying to keep a lid on excitement. I felt like I wanted to wrestle someone…

As always, the night before didn’t deliver the most amazing sleep ever, not least because of the 03:30 alarm call. With Jamie & Troy in a wave 45 minutes before mine, plus the usual fear of running out of time, we were happy to be up and heading to the swim start. What on paper seemed like a mission of parking, walking to the start, dropping off bags etc actually turned out to be no trouble. Challenge have got the admin down pat and this was the recurring theme throughout – they have a very different (I think better) feel about them to WTC which seems much more corporate and less personal.

A last check of the bikes, loading up nutrition and pumping up tyre’s and it was almost show time. The atmosphere was amazing – really buzzy and with great building tension in the air. With wetsuit pulled on, I made my way to the start and watched a couple of waves go off – the sound of the cannon at the start of each waive was thunderous and the perfect way to start this epic event.

THE SWIM: 1:05:14

As already mentioned, the swim is a long, straight drag in the canal, a turnaround, then past the start point under a bridge packed with spectators before turning again for home. As expected there was a lot of thrashing, but I had adopted a position at one side to I think escaped the worst. I felt pretty relaxed and was annoyed I hadn’t got closer to the front as I was definitely held up by the swimmers in front of me. Other than losing my cap after about 15 minutes, and a couple of kicks to the face it was pretty uneventful and I felt like I had a good relaxed rhythm and a solid catch. By now I was going past swimmers 3 waves on front of mine meaning there was some navigation to be done to side-step the bottlenecks. All was well until we approached the aforementioned bridge when I stepped it up a gear thinking we were almost home. But (and here is a lesson in proper prep), the final turnaround marker wasn’t where I thought it was going to be and we had probably about another 300m to go. So, I had to adjusted and didn’t let it freak me out but I was kicking myself for the amateur-hour error.

T1 0:03:20

Usually stress free, I hit a problem here – someone had either moved or accidentally grabbed my bike bag. There was nothing other than a small towel and socks in it, but it meant I didn’t have a bag to put my wetsuit in. This really threw the volunteers, but one girl eventually took it from me and said she’s take care of it. I wasn’t sure what that meant but trusted in karma to return it to me somehow.

THE BIKE 05:29:56

The course here is 2 laps and that is how I broke it down in my mind. The advice form those vastly more experienced than me was unanimous: don’t get excited and take it easy on the bike. Although my use of a power meter was really about gathering data, my slightly unscientific plan was not to let power go over about 250w on the climbs. At the front of my mind all the time was the fact I had to run my first ever marathon when I got off after 180km. Looking back on the data, the ride is littered with spikes so a have some work to do on this!

There were a couple of notable features. The first was that it was very windy – apparently the windiest Roth on record. The second lap was worse, and the common view was that even for the best cyclists this might have meant 20 minutes. The second was the Solaraberg climb, the most legendary section where thousands of locals come to support the athletes and narrow the road to single file. It really took my breath away on the first lap and I felt like a TDF rider. The power definitely spiked then!

My nutrition plan was not very well defined. I had 7 gels on a squeezy bottle, several bars in my bento box and 2 drinks bottles – one with isotonic drink, the other with an electrolyte drink. I’d also taken one tablet to help with GI at the suggestion of Tam Lewis – this had worked really well for me in my last 70.3 and I’d avoided some of the GI issues encountered at previous races.

At about 150k I was starting to get a sore back from being on the aero bars, but otherwise felt pretty decent physically and despite the wind, there were stretches where over 40kph that felt effortless. 2 Ibuprofen sorted the back but not the mind fuckery and I really wanted the bike to end quickly. That brief bleak moment passed after about 15 minutes and before I know it we were rolling into T2.

T2 00:03:27

A great example of how Challenge look after the athletes: Volunteers see you coming in and clock your number, finding your bag and handing it right to you. Another volunteeer practically put my shoes on for me and handed me my fuel belt and visor while another put suncream on my neck and shoulders. Amazing.

THE RUN. 04:21:06

Oh my….the run! I know it would be all about the run which is definitely my weakest discipline. And I’ve never run a marathon before, so experience = ZILCH!

Things started really well, probably too well. My plan was to aim for a 3:45 marathon at a constant 5:20 pace. I felt surprisingly good going into the run. At my previous event in Mallorca i knew within a minute that the run was going to be a ‘mare so it was pleasing to feel so positive – so much so that I had to really slow myself down in the first meters. Before I knew it, I was closing in on 10km with the only memorable point hearing @TroyMaloy bellow “P-Doooogggg!” at me long before I saw him.

The course at Roth is flat, with much of it being long canal-side stretches. We’d been warned that this can be a bit of a head fuck because the scenery doesn’t change and at times you can see 5km’s ahead. In the end this wan’t too bad and it is punctuated by looping into small villages at the turnaround points at either end where, like on the bike course, the level of support from local people is pretty amazing.

The 15km point passed and so far so good. Then 20km…still not too bad, but somewhere around the 25km point things started to get a bit ugly. The legs were getting tired and the lack of strategy on the bike nutrition started to comeback to bite me as the feeling of having a brick sitting in my stomach grew. Up to this point I’d walked a couple of the aid stations and taken coke and water from the start but this, on top of the gels and bars from the bike all started getting a bit much. There was no danger of a Paula Radcliffe style crisis, but I was getting really uncomfortable and was now having to walk more frequently. The legs were really tight now, and the focus was all about getting from aid station to aid station. I really dont remember much about the run other than @JamieWardell shouting at me at one aid station (I think he knew I was struggling) and thinking “This is really going to get shitty” quite a lot. For one brief moment at around 30km a horrible thought entered my mind…”I’m not going to finish this”. Then I remembered all the amazing messages of support, good luck and positive vibes I’d received before the race from family, friends and even strangers and kicked that right into touch.

I couldn’t stomach any more coke or sports drink so decided late in the run to try the chicken soup. “Chicken soup? Whaaaa?” I can hear you say. But to be fair, it was magical – my stomach immediately felt a little better, enough that I could at least get a shuffle going and as well as alleviating the monotony of sweet drinks I also amused myself for a while by thinking of this.

By now I had about 10km to go and I knew I just had to grind it out. I kept moving, except for one moment when my brain just said “Sit down, IMMEDIATELY!” which I did without any say in the matter. Then I thought, “What the fuck are you doing” and managed to get myself up and going again.

A few more walking periods punctuated the by now well off the pace running but on the last turnoff the canal path and thought a section of forrest I was ticking off the km’s. With about 4km to go the route enters the town of Roth where the crowds start building up and I could hear the music from the finish line PA. The course loops into the town before heading for the finish and I have to say that the last 3 km felt like the longest of the day. But nothing lasts forever. Running under the big banner over the entrance to the expo and onto the red carpet was glorious, but even now a sharp cramp in my stomach made me stop for about 5 seconds.

The finish line at Roth is inside a purpose built arena in the town centre, and it’s a bit like finishing a race in a night club. Crowds, noise, music, colour, energy – really a memorable experience.

And so I crossed the line, had a medal put round my neck and proceeded to collapse on the grass and be hit by a wave of emotion. @TroyMaloy was waiting for me as close as he could get and I’ve never been so happy to see a friend. A few man tears and hugs later and I was ready to sit down and rest.

So, my first full distance race completed and with a few days to mull things over, here are some observations that I’ll be taking into my next one, and using in my training:

The marathon can kick your arse.

You can’t really know what to expect until you do one.

A solid and tested nutrition strategy on the bike is critical to your run.

I raced with power, but need to dial that in much more efficiently and use it more effectively. At least now I’ve started a data history.

The marathon can kick your arse.

No matter how good you feel, stick to the plan on the run.

Friends are awesome.

I keep saying it, and I’m not sponsored, but Xendurance works – I’m amazed at how not-shit I felt the days after the race.

Much work needs to be done on my running.

The marathon can kick your arse.

Despite my final time being about 30 minutes slower than I had secretly been hoping for, I feel pretty positive. I think if I were to (metaphorically) do this again tomorrow I could get close to that. Maybe that’s the post-race, pain-has-faded Paul talking……

As a final point, I have to mention some particularly amazing things about this event.

Volunteers are amazing, brilliant and vital Remember to say thank you to as many of them as you can, wherever you race.

The local people come out to support in their thousands – 200,000 apparently. That gives me goosebumps.

And stick around for the final finisher and fireworks – it’s a massive party atmosphere and just felt right to be there